


October

by nice_girls_play



Category: Actor RPF, Martin and Lewis RPF
Genre: 1940s, Claustrophobia, Fear of crowds, M/M, Running Away, Unresolved Romantic Tension, fear of elevators
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 06:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11351784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: It's Columbus Day, 1944 and Frank Sinatra's appearance at the Paramount has effectively shut down Times Square. For Dean, the claustrophobia in his hotel room is as real as it is on the street.





	October

"God damn it, Lewis, why are you always in my room? This ain't the YWCA, clear out!"

Dean doesn't see anything that warrants the commotion Lou is making: Jerry is his friend, reading his comic book, sitting on the patch of floor where he'll probably be sleeping on tonight while his manager gets to keep his bed and two other singers get the pull-out sofa. All while keeping him company and keeping him happy -- which is in the best interest of everyone these days.

"I can vouch for him, Lou. He don't eat much and he takes up no space -- look at him! Fold him in half and you could probably fit him in the top drawer."

Jerry pulls his knees in, as if to demonstrate; face a mask of absurd innocence.

"I like you, kid,” Lou concedes. “But I ain't boarding anyone who's not signed to me. It's crowded enough in here as is. Cop a walk!"

Jerry's getting to his feet and, if there's a little bit of force when Dean pushes himself up from the desk well that's on Lou, too. Whose fault is it that it that the place has gotten so damn crowded anyway?

"All right, fine! I'll drop off for a few hours, too,” he says, grabbing his jacket from the chair and shoving his arms into the sleeves. “Let's get a milkshake, kid. If you're nice to me, I'll burp you after."

\--

The air is cold by the time they hit the street. Dean fumbles to button his jacket before the next stiff breeze takes it. October in New York is a hell of a lot colder than in Ohio. After more than a year of calling the city his home base, he's still not used to it.

"So, where we going for your milkshake?" he asks, fastening the last button up to his breastbone, leaving room at the top to breathe.

"I don't want a milkshake." Jerry's face hasn't shifted from the sulk that started when Lou started bawling him out.

"You want an orange juice?"

"No."

"Ginger ale?"

He shakes his head.

"Pablum?"

That one gets him a dirty look.

"I'm running out of menu space, kid. You pick something."

"Sinatra."

It takes a moment for Dean to kick _that_ image clear from his head. 

"Outside my price range," he finally replies, once it's locked away to be revisited later, when he's alone with a locked door (which, if he's lucky, might be sometime before Christmas). 

"It's not outside mine,” Jerry's eyes are flashing with promise when he looks up. “Come with me!"

\--

The kid, it turns out, has an “in” at the Paramount, by way of the Belmont Hotel -- a cute staffer who likes his record act and has a cousin that will get them in the side door, around the crowds and the police cars stationed to manage the crowds. 

"Standing room only, but better than nothing."

“Just find me a wall to lean against,” Dean tells him, rubbing his face to disguise his swallow as he thinks about the mob of 20,000 girls that have been swarming Times Square for the past two days. Crammed into a 3000-seat theater. Nothing to worry about. “I'll be just fine.”

They stop by the Holland Hotel first so Jerry can change into a jacket and a different shirt. 

"What's the matter with what you’ve got on now?"

"I've been sweating in it all day. Anyway it's not nice enough for the Paramount. I know -- I ushered there one summer."

Dean's pretty sure Sinatra would forgive him the sartorial faux pas. But he's not in the mood to argue, and watching his young friend fiddle with his drawers and suitcase in just his undershirt is ...no hardship. 

"You could have borrowed one of mine?"

"You're two sizes bigger than me! I'd end up looking like the kid that got sent to school in his pappy's hand-me-downs. No thanks."

Dean shrugs. "Moot point now anyhow."

Nanny Irving, his road manager by way of the Browns' hotel in the Catskills, is nowhere to be seen and, far from a relief, it seems to make Jerry antsy as he buttons and tucks and hurries Dean out like the place is on fire.

They're halfway down the hall when a door slams behind them.

_"Hey, Joey. I wanted to talk with you."_

Feminine voice, matronly. Dean almost misses it. He's too busy trying to think of how he can get Jerry to take the stairs with him without outright stating that he's claustrophobic. He can't excuse himself for a smoke or a run to the bathroom. Can't pretend he forgot something in his room when his own room is a mile away. And 'elevator takes too long' only works so many times, particularly in this city. The truth – that his skin heats up, he gets the shakes, and stops breathing – is not an option.

_"Joey! Get back here! I said we need to talk."_

Urgent now. Loud enough that Dean glances back, one eye on Jerry who just stares straight ahead, eyes flinty and liquid.

"Is she speaking to you?" Dean asks.

"No," he answers a little too quickly.

_"JOEY!"_

"Walk a bit faster. We're taking the elevator."

Dean’s breathing stalls, images of locked boxes flashing in his head, trapped and falling, walls closing in.

"No!” he shouts, catching himself. “No elevator. Stairs."

"No stairs. C'mon, the doors are closing. Hurry up."

"Stairs,” he gives his friend's arm a tug and pulls him through the door. 

Jerry's hand is in his and they're vaulting down the stairs nearly two at a time, down to one landing, then the next when a door crashes open above them.

BLAM!

_"JOEY!"_

“Jesus Christ,” Dean gasps, before he can catch himself. Death from above. 

"She can outrun both of us, Paul,” Jerry's face is twisted with panicked resolve now as he drags them through the door and into the tenth floor hallway. “Take my word for it. Elevator."

"Fuck!" He holds his breath and follows his friend in like the last man into a submarine. The gap between the doors slowly narrows to a point -- a red-faced woman with glasses between them -- then disappears completely.  


Nine floors, nothing but the creak of cables and muffled shouting growing fainter. Dean's skin is on fire. He feels his heart stop in his chest, then start hammering so hard it thumps against his collarbone. He squeezes his eyes shut, holding his breath as the car goes into a staggered descent. 

He's still holding Jerry's hand, fingers laced together, by the time they reach the lobby; leaves it there as they move briskly to the front door and out on to the sidewalk.

"Are you okay?" Jerry's voice is quiet and he's looking at Dean like one of the kids whenever daddy drops something in the kitchen or trips over the rug, eyes soft and murky, a little bit worried, a little bit scared. 

“Yeah,” Dean clears his throat, reaching up to straighten his collar, fiddle with the top button on his jacket. “Who the hell was that?" 

"My mother."

His... mother. Okay, running from parents isn't exactly a new activity for Dean and he's heard plenty of things from other people on the circuit that make running from one or both of Jerry's parents sound like a good idea. But still...

"What's her problem?"

"I was born!" he shoots back, face morphing from resignation to anger then, finally, guilt. "And I married a Catholic girl without telling her."

The guilt is enough to make Dean angry. Not at Jerry -- at the idiot woman who thought it was reason enough to disown her only son a week ago and do everything but chase him down with an elephant gun today.  


He huffs out a laugh, willing more air back into his lungs. "Well. I don't know how she thinks that's any of her business but okay."

His friend seems to have forgotten how to keep his mouth closed. When he doesn't answer, Dean follows up with another question. 

"Are we walking or training it to the Paramount?"

There's a pause, a flicker of what might be relief, astonishment, a sliver of gratitude. Jerry blinks it away.

"Walking. Unless you've got tokens?"

Dean does not. Which is just as well -- he'd have to let go of Jerry's hand to dig them out.

\--

The Paramount is indeed standing room only by the time they get there and there isn't much floor left to stand on. 

Throngs of girls fill nearly every square inch of the place -- the reek of salt, damp, and -- somewhere -- the spoiled smell of tuna fish and warm egg salad betraying just how long some of them have been there. Dean's dimly aware that it's Columbus Day tomorrow, giving the school-age bobbysoxers with a holiday ahead of them extra incentive to stay put. He wonders if they stay long enough, he and Jerry will get to see police physically carry some of them out. He's not sure he wants to stick around for that. It’s difficult enough to breathe as it is and the image of the two of them being knocked to the ground and stampeded isn't the happiest thought he's had today.

Eventually, the two of them fight their way to a bare spot on the stairs near the mezzanine. He gropes the wall like a lifeline while Jerry flanks his left, keeping anyone from getting too close to him. Finally, an eternity later, the band strikes up, the lights go down...

Frank Sinatra is shorter than both of them, and only six inches high at this distance from the stage. And as soon as he steps up to the mic, and the shrieking applause recedes... he fills the entire theater. The entire block. All of Times Square.

_I alone have heard this lovely strain_  
_I alone have heard this glad refrain_  
_Must it be forever inside of me?_  
_Why can't I let it go? Why can't I let you know?_

Dean doesn't speak, wonders if he's even breathing as that voice transitions smoothly into the next number and then the next one. He reaches for Jerry's sleeve instead and finds his own sleeve cuff is already taken, his young friend's fingers gripping lightly. 

\--

In the end, the police do have to pull some of the girls out. It’s a welcome distraction for the stragglers and door jumpers. He and Jerry manage to grope their way to the service stairs and make their way to the freedom of the alley while the boys in blue are distracted wiping tearful faces and removing clutching fingers from theater seats.

"Coffee?" Dean offers, his own voice sounding almost alien to him after so many hours of silence.

"Sure,” Jerry nods absently, looking as dazed as Dean feels.

Hanson's is a ten-minute walk from the theater and open 24-hours so they can hold onto the booth for as long as they can pay for their coffee – which, Dean figures, might get them to 3am if they can swing it.

They sit together in absolute silence for the first hour, exchanging only a few words with minimal syllables over the next two. 

“He's just... It's just amazing, Paul,” he says, whispering Dean’s middle name like it’s sanctified. "Right?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, content rather than fatigued. "Nice to know a kid from Hoboken can make it." 

Jerry nibbles a Thompson's English muffin and, after their third round of coffee, Dean finds himself ordering a slice of pumpkin pie. His skin feels cool, hand steady as he picks up his fork and knife. Poised to break... something. He's not sure what. But if he's not sure, he can be certain that the kid doesn't suspect. He sets about his task slowly, meticulously slicing the tiniest, most precise bite-sized portion until he's sure he has slightly-misty hazel eyes watching his every move... Then slamming his fork into the larger piece and shoving it into his face.

Jerry laughs for ten straight minutes, each peel of laughter dying and reborn anew with a raised eyebrow, a scrape of the fork across his plate, the appearance of their bewildered waitress. 

Dean smiles, finally able to breathe. 

\--

It's even chillier by the time they leave the diner. Well-past 2 am now, traffic lights and neon flashing on a black sky. The crowded nightmare of the bobbysoxer riot has long since cleared out, leaving crumpled programs and sandwich wrappers blowing like tumbleweeds across open streets and sidewalks.

"Do you want me to walk you back home?" Dean asks.

If nothing else, he figures can get Jerry to the door, be a barrier for whichever shrieking parent is poised to pounce on him the second he steps into the hall (and, if either of them are anything like his parents, they've been waiting since two seconds after the elevator doors closed).

"Actually, can you walk me back to your place?" Jerry asks, eyes still glistening.

"You don't have to be back?"

"I left a note for Irving on the dresser. I'm all yours until Lou kicks me out again." 

Dean clears his throat again, fiddles with the kid's collar and buttons to hide the way his pulse is jumping. 

"If he's already asleep, that'll get us to tomorrow morning. But it'll probably be the floor for both of us." 

"I don't care," Jerry shrugs, reaching up to cover Dean's hand, his own pulse beating in tandem's against the older man's fingers.

"Deal."

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by events described in several interviews on Martin and Lewis' career. The lyrics come from "The Song is You," one of Sinatra's first solo recordings. Jerry describes seeing Sinatra at the Paramount with Dean in _Dean and Me: A Love Story_ , though his dates are imprecise. I opted to go with the historic "Columbus Day Riot" appearance, less than two weeks after Jerry eloped and when Dean was still bunking with his manager at the Bryant Hotel. Feedback always welcome!
> 
> YWCA stands for "Young _Women's **Christian**_ Association." Jerry had twice the reason to sulk at Lou's suggestion he should go there.


End file.
